FSFE Italy asks political parties about their positions on Free Software

In light of the upcoming elections in Italy on March 4th, the FSFE country team Italy sent out multiple questions to the participating parties to challenge them on their position about Free Software in public administration and education. We will publish and analyse their answers once we receive them.

At the Free Software Foundation Europe, we believe that we can and should make Free Software and Open Standards an issue in all elections, be they on a European, national, regional, or local level. That is why the FSFE uses the time in the runup to elections to ask politicians about their stance on Free Software and Open Standards in our Ask Your Candidates framework.

Recently, the FSFE country team Italy sent multiple questions to the participating parties in the Italian general election, happening on March 4th. The questions are about the parties' positions on the use of Free Software and Open Standards within public administrations and their willingness to replace proprietary formats. More questions are about the use of Free Software in public education and about their stand on Art. 68 and 69 of the "Codice Amministrazione Digitale" as well as on net neutrality. We will publish and analyse their answers once we receive them.

"With this campaign we like to remind Italian politicians about the importance of Free Software and the execution of Article 68 and 69 of the Codice Amministrazione Digitale that public administrations are obliged to comply with." says Natale Vinto, FSFE's coordinator Italy. "On the other hand we like to give Italian voters a chance for this election to easily know about the participating parties positions on Free Software."

Background: Art 68 and 69 of the "Codice Amministrazione Digitale" require public administrations in Italy to prefer internally made solutions and Free Software solutions over proprietary ones. Also, they have the duty to share the source code and documentation of self-developed software with public money. Unfortunately, these requirements still lack implementation a lot of times.

These are the questions that have been sent to the participating parties:

What is your position on the use of Free and Open Source Software within the public administration?

Are you in favour of making the use of open standards obligatory for public administrations?

Are you in favour of introducing the expansion and development of Free and Open Source Software into the school and university curricula?

What is your stand in respect to the Digital Administration Code (in particular Art. 68 and 69: "Reuse of open solutions and standards") and in case of agreement, would you still modify anything in it?